Copy and paste functions traditionally involved copying selected text and pasting text in another location. In some applications, discontinuous portions of text, i.e., portions of text from different locations in a single document, may be selected and copied, and pasted into another document or application. However, in traditional applications, discontinuous portions of selected text are simply appended to a text string. The context of the selected text is not copied, and information about the document from which it is pasted is also not copied. Thus, information that may be relevant to the selected portions of text is lost in the copy of the selected portions.